


These Violent Delights

by savanting



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: F/M, No Romance, One Shot, Pre-Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Short One Shot, lightsaber duels as metaphors
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-23
Updated: 2020-07-23
Packaged: 2021-03-04 20:14:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 782
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25472212
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/savanting/pseuds/savanting
Summary: Rey and Kylo Ren keep meeting like this, and it’s getting old. (Originally Posted on LiveJournal 12/28/2015)
Relationships: Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 1
Kudos: 3





	These Violent Delights

**Author's Note:**

> I do not own Star Wars or its characters. This is from the early days after I first saw The Force Awakens. Enjoy!
> 
> Title comes from lines in the play _Romeo and Juliet_ by William Shakespeare

Kylo Ren is standing before her, his face maskless, as she tries to remain calm in her restraints. Too much of this reminds her of the interrogation so many moon cycles ago. In truth she had been foolish, thinking she could chance a venture away from Master Luke’s side after months of training that had nearly smothered her with its intensity. She had been reckless, foolhardy, in supposing that a quick trip wouldn’t be intercepted in some way by the First Order.

“So we meet again, scavenger,” Ren says. Rey notices how the muscles in his face move to accentuate the scar from the wound she gave him ages ago. She wonders if the scar is a reminder that he’ll never allow her to best him again.

Rey hates the way his voice is a deception; she’d rather have the metallic voice through the mask, intimidating in its inhumanity. With his face open to the light, it’s too easy to see where kindness might shine if he were a different sort of man. It’s too easy to imagine he might show her empathy, or mercy, or something remotely human.

But there is nothing salvageable inside someone who killed his own father.

“If you get to call me scavenger, does that mean I should call you murderer?” she asks, not meeting his gaze as he circles around her, his cloak sweeping the floor behind him.

She tenses when his gloved hand reaches for her cheek, hovering above the skin as if he cannot decide whether to strike or caress her. But then, before he can make contact, his hand falls. Rey lets out a breath she hadn’t realized she had been holding.

“So quick to use your tongue like a blade,” he notes. “That’s far more a Sith trait than a Jedi one, scavenger.”

“What of it? Can you call yourself a proper Sith when your own tongue is like a dull knife?” 

Rey expects a strike to follow this time—or a mind invasion to teach her a lesson—but instead he surprises her by chuckling. The sound is so gentle and unassuming that she might have been fooled if she had been meeting him for the first time. But she won’t lower her guard, not when she still doesn’t know what he hopes to achieve with this exchange.

“Smooth talking has never been my strong suit. That’s why I didn’t become a politician—or a smuggler,” he says, and she meets his eyes for the first time at the direction the conversation has taken. To so casually allude to his mother and his father—she feels her blood boil, remembering Han’s fall at the Starkiller base. If she were free, if she had her lightsaber, she would—

No. Rey closes her eyes. _Breathe. Don’t let everything Master Luke taught you be for naught._

When she feels calm again, she meets Ren’s gaze anew. He looks expectant, as if he is waiting only for another duel of words to begin.

“No,” she finally says, “you instead chose to become a mimicry of Darth Vader.”

Something passes across Ren’s face—a hint of anger, wounded pride?—but it’s gone before she can decipher its meaning. It shouldn’t matter, but a part of her is curious.

 _Why do you idolize and emulate Darth Vader so much?_ she wonders. But before she can even think to probe towards his mind, he turns his face away. His mind may as well be a wall against her.

“My master is curious about you,” Kylo Ren says. “It is never a good thing when my master becomes curious about someone.”

Rey feels almost the urge to laugh at him. “Are you jealous of me?”

His eyes flick to her, and from the glower on his face she can tell she hit a nerve. “It’s not every day a girl strong with the force appears out of nowhere. He’s wanted you ever since he heard about your skill.”

A chill runs down her spine. Rey has heard things in passing about Snoke. Rumors, mostly, but all of them have left their own imprint on her nightmares.

“I won’t go willingly,” she says. Her voice stays steady, but already she can feel the whispers of fear tease at her mind.

Kylo Ren steps forward. “I was betting on that.”

“Were you?” Now it’s her turn to chuckle. Anything to keep the dread at bay. “I think you’re underestimating what I’ve learned since we last met.”

“And I think you’re forgetting that I’ve had my own training in the time we’ve been apart,” he says.

Her restraints fall away then, and suddenly she’s free.

“Show me, scavenger, just what you’ve learned.”


End file.
